It's windy, and supposed to be windy early tomorrow. Which means the flea market will probably be cancelled. Which I'm okay with because I kinda slacked off on making new product this week in favor of other things. I have a tablecloth now, and qr code stickers, and I'm about to get started carving the wood block stamp for my giveaway coasters.

Jesus, websites are time eaters. Sure, it only took me an hour to take the product photos & video clips, but processing them is ridiculous. I'm still looking for some kind of program/app that will do what I want. The easy answer is to just use instagram and save the video clips it makes, but I don't think I'm ready for that. It's like I have a weird stage fright thing with social media now. It's like if someone filled a pool full of sewage, gave you a hazmat suit and said the water's fine, jump on in. Technically the hazmat suit will protect you, but still, ew gross.

Also I have to figure out a way to center stuff perfectly on my display turntable. I have the carved slate on the turntable, and the cup on the slate. I was working quickly and in all my vides the cups aren't perfectly centered and it drives me mad. I cannot handle the wobble of the cup. Cannot.

Went to the good art store (not michaels, burn in hell, shitty craft swindler) and got some matboard for product photo backdrops in black and dark grey. I also found a large sheet of handmade art paper that is offwhite and printed with white skulls. It's perfect for an interesting light colored backdrop. Personally I think the cups look better against a dark background, but if I want to do goimagine they like the white backgrounds. TATTOOS. SKULLS. YEAH. *devil horns*

So I signed up for goimagine and the fools gave me an account. It's a little rinky-dink, reminds me of websites circa 2010, but that's not a bad thing. It has a certain charm, a throwback from when the internet meant well and wasn't so aggressively exploitive. It's refreshing being on a website that doesn't have an algorithm calculating everything behind the scenes. There's no phone app. I don't have anything listed yet, I've just been poking around. I think it will do fine as an online purchase option. It costs $2.50 a month plus 5% of sales. Even if I sell nothing I can afford $30 a year for "just in case". Business does not seem brisk on the platform (nobody seems to have many reviews) but in their defense they've only been around single digit months, plus I don't care if there's traffic or not. I am still reading the etsy forums and such and god, what a clusterfuck collision of the worst the gig economy has to offer. No thank you. There is such thing as too much traffic.

Nobody's doing cups like mine on goimagine. There are some decal cups and laser engraved cups and epoxy cups, but they're all quick generic logos and sassy/inspirational catch phrases. "Meme on a cup" cups. Stuff for wine mommies. Nothing original. I haven't gone looking for other hand engraved cup makers. 1) They're probably way more skilled than I, and then I'll just feel bad. 2) I don't want what they're doing to influence what I want to do, positively or negatively. Like if they do an octopus cup then I CAN'T do an octopus cup without feeling like I'm copying, and that seems silly. So I probably won't go looking for others making product like mine until I build some confidence.

I was half worried a real engraver would be at the farmer's swap and chastise me for selling crap. :-( Like, I think this tattoo apprenticeship messed me up. Real engraving with hand gravers is a difficult art form that takes decades to learn. Noodling around with a rotary tool is not real engraving (but hey, neither is laser engraving, and there's a lot more of that around). Am I disrespecting real engravers? Am I, like, the scratcher version of engravers? Am I gonna get yelled at in public by some bearded old guy dressed like Jeremiah Johnson for being a fake engraver and disrespecting the tradition of engraving? *psyduck*

Tattooing did not help the inferiority complex I get when I'm around other artists. I don't have a degree in art. It's just this thing I do and I pick up bits and pieces along the way. But there's always a sense that I am doing things wrong and REAL ARTISTS who went to college will instantly know. Here I am, feral, drawing on cups willy-nilly in the metaphorical corner.

Apparently there is something called cerakote that might be an option for coloring cups. Again, can't do it in an apartment, need a garage and a special paint sprayer and a separate oven. But I'm getting attached to giving my cups and such a custom "paint" job of some kind. Powder coat, cerakote, something. This is probably a terrible idea. This is exactly how I got myself into fabric dyeing. If you ever catch yourself thinking, "fabric dyeing sounds easy and fun", immediately take a hammer and smash your thumb to teach yourself a lesson. Trust me.

In the meantime I finally ordered the patina and cannot wait to get my grubby hands on it. Patina, at least, I can do. I think it will be just the thing I need for plain stainless steel.